Hey George! R/I Questions on Poly

[officerbird]

Hello All...

I am getting ready to take a pre-employment poly for LE.  I have read TLBTLD and found it very interesting.  I have heard through the grapevine that the agency I am testing with asks the following questions:

Have you been honest regarding the following:

-employment
-drug use
-sexual past
-education
-training
-financial
-ommissions
-use of marijuana
-etc

I believe this might be a R/I test but it seems these are all relevent questions....am I right here?

Also, I heard that sometimes they may add the mj question in the end and not notifiy you in the pretest...would that then become a control question purely for stimulations purposes?

If this were a R/I test and I were to use radom CMs would that be effective???  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[George W. Maschke]

Even if no irrelevant questions are included in the mix, the technique you've described would most likely be scored in the same way as the relevant/irrelevant technique: the polygrapher looks for consistent, specific, and significant reactions to any of the relevant questions. If such reactions are observed to a particular question, then deception is inferred.

Augmenting reactions to a different pair of items during each chart collection would tend to diminish the liklihood that any one question would stand out more than others. However, behavioral countermeasures -- and having an innocuous explanation prepared in advance for any claimed "reactions" -- may well be enough to get one through.

In pre-employment screening, a question about marijuana usage would be a relevant one. It is highly irregular for a relevant question not to be reviewed during the pre-test phase. It is possible that a creative polygrapher in this department is using this question as a "control" stimulus. Alternatively, asking an unreviewed relevant question would be a simple way of rigging a polygraph examination against a particular applicant.

[officerbird]

Thank you for the insight...very helpful!